


Magical Folk Really Like the Smell of Jasmine and Wild Oranges

by definitionangel



Series: Of Starlight and Clouds [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-16 09:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19645060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/definitionangel/pseuds/definitionangel
Summary: Doyoung's a little bit apprehensive when Taeyong stalks him to a fancy Italian restaurant to bring him to a lonely little french mansion in the woods.





	Magical Folk Really Like the Smell of Jasmine and Wild Oranges

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, before you read this, I want to promote some self care. What time is it? If it's anywhere between 1:30 am and 3 am please go to sleep, this story can wait. You can't actually "catch up" on sleep, so go sleep. Did you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner today? If you haven't, at least go drink water if you aren't hungry. Shall we begin?

God bless his internship mentor for funding their trip to this expensive Italian restaurant that he doesn’t know the name of. The food is amazing, it brings him to heaven but he cannot describe the tastes because he’s forgotten what the average functional adult calls them. Doyoung’s also not very good at identifying the different tastes of food so there’s that too. He’s not a foodie, he doesn’t have to know this, so he doesn’t care.

The chairs of the place are also better than the worn down office chair he has in his apartment with Yuta, so even if he feels extremely out of place between the many different business owners chatting about future adventures here, he takes his sweet time with the food. 

The place is very pretty, the light of the chandeliers giving off a feeling like candlelight. Vines climb up the the arched walls and the white of the tablecloths and chairs makes him wonder if they bleach the cushions regularly.

It feels like someone is watching him. It always does, he can always sense the weight of some sort of judgement on his back, but this feels different. It feels like the weight of a gaze he should know, maybe from another life or another universe. He’s been spending too much time with Yuta, he used to think the thoughts of reincarnations seemed kind of absurd. Alternate universes seemed far more plausible to them, far kinder to his astrophysics oriented brain.

The red eyed adonis must be a trick of the light. According to all the myths and fables he’s ever read, vampires are allergic to garlic. (Okay so sue him for binge watching hollywood movies in his free time and counting those as legitimate sources for the supernatural, even if he knows plenty of supernatural beings himself and he could just. Ask.)

Nope, Taeyong is not a trick of the light. The vampire is definitely trying to hide under a tablecloth of someone else’s table to stare at him. And as much as Doyoung admires Taeyong’s attempts to admire his beauty from afar, he’s also kind of tired of it. Yuta has told him about the vampire tailing him whenever he decides to stray from his routine. It’s creepy, yes, but whatever. Taeyong doesn’t mean any harm by it.

Sighing, Doyoung jerks at Taeyong, waving his hand for him to get out of his position when no one’s looking at that table. How can someone be such an idiot? Of all the places to hide, he hides underneath a table, where a family sits.

“Why are you here?” Doyoung sighs, the air rushes out of his lungs. He’s not prepared to deal with this tonight, it should have been his day off from babysitting magical folk. Curse his heart for speeding, for thumping in his chest like a gorilla would. He doesn’t need to be flustered here.

Curse Taeyong for looking so nice and fancy. Why couldn’t he have been like Mark instead, cute and only wakening his motherly instincts? Instead, Taeyong has to go and look like this walking undead marble statue that makes him want to scream and cry because his heart is a traitor. Also, curse Taeyong’s voice for sounding so nice to his ears, “I smelled something really nice.”

Doyoung can almost hear Taeil scolding him for even thinking of cursing anyone or anything. He can recite it by memory, ‘cursing is reserved for last resort of the last resort.’ He’s not too keen on breaking Taeil’s rules today, no thank you.

“Aren’t vampires allergic to garlic? Why are you in a place filled with garlic?” Doyoung’s genuinely curious, because as much as Hollywood movies can be inaccurate, Doyoung has seen Mark sneezing within a fifty foot range of garlic. He’s about ready to go now, the semester finished and he wants to go home, and sleep for the rest of the winter to make up for every hour that he’s lost. He honestly does not mind Taeyong following him home, not tonight.

Yuta will probably lecture him about the dangers of allowing a vampire into their home, but Doyoung does not care. Not tonight. If he dies or gets turned into a vampire if Taeyong accidentally loses control, whatever.

“Eh, the garlic is just a minor nuisance to me. Senior Dracula was the only one who ever really was affected by the garlic-” Taeyong’s cut short when Doyoung stands, without first going up to the cashier table. The adults with the children eye him suspiciously. They must be a church family or something, church families are always a bit loopy. Taeyong matches his steps as he pushes the doors open to the cold winds outside, “Hey, why are you leaving? Don’t humans usually pay when they go out to eat?”

“My mentor has already paid. Come on, let’s go. I’m not keen on letting the humans here know that a vampire is in their midst.” He isn’t annoyed by Taeyong, he just doesn’t want to be in the cold for any longer than he has to. His sweater and leggings do little to shield him from the biting air of the streets, and he shivers lightly.

He’d ask Taeyong to share body heat, but Taeyong is undead and therefore has no body heat at all.

The stars blinking in the night sky makes him experience something, something like melancholy and homesickness, but he isn’t sure why. They always make him feel like this, always eat at his chest and he longs for something that is dust in his memories. It balances out the euphoria he feels at seeing Taeyong, so he figures it’s only fair.

“Where are you going now?” Taeyong whispers as they walk on the sidewalks of shady neighborhoods. The city is nice, you can’t ever know what will be coming at you on the next corner, will it be a snobby rich part of the city where everything is nice and clean? Or will it be a place where you are likely to get murdered for walking? It keeps things interesting. It’s a long walk back to his college apartment, in the college part of town with all its tired students and parties and tense air due to competitiveness.

It’s nice walking with Taeyong, who always seems to know when to speak, and when to stay quiet. It’s almost comforting, gives him a sense of deja vu for a reason that is at the tip of his tongue, is always at the tip of his tongue.

“Back to my apartment? Where else would I go?” Doyoung thinks for a little while, doesn’t know if he wants to walk that far or call an uber. Sleeping under the stars would be nice, but it’s too cold, and he doesn’t quite trust their city park enough. It’s kind of infested with ghouls and ghosts, which he can very much see and they are a real bother at times.

Taeyong, however, has a different plan in mind. “Oh please, it’s such a beautiful night. Come to the park with me.”

“I just want to go home.” So maybe Doyoung is weak for Taeyong’s pout. And maybe he’s curious to know more about the folk who he slaves away for in Target. And yes, that is enough for him to heave a sigh and agree to be brought to wherever Taeyong wants to bring him. He feels light tonight, even with the melancholy of the air, “Is this something all vampires do? Keep their victims from going home so they can monopolize their sleeping time?”

He laughs at the look on Taeyong’s face. The other man looks so scandalized, with his eyes wide and eyebrows raised, it kind of makes him look like a clown.

“No! I have something I want to show you! Come onnnnn.” Taeyong whines, and uses his goddamned supernatural strength to pull his arm out of his socket in the direction of the park full of ghouls and ghosts.

Doyoung remembers one of the ghosts trying to eat him the last time he was at that park. Maybe Taeyong doesn’t know that. Maybe he does.

“Oh my god. I’m going to die. If you wanted to kill me you should just tell me, you know. I don’t mind.” Doyoung declares, as he gets pulled into a tangled looking forest that he’d never known existed behind one of the bathrooms in the ghoul filled park. (The bathroom has the nastiest ghost ever, and that is why Doyoung never, ever goes near it.)

He can’t see the stars from here.

“Come onnnnnn, I just want to introduce you to my coven.” Taeyong insists, and Doyoung can feel a small, fond smile growing on his face. Absolutely horrible. He cannot be this fond of Taeyong already.

It still feels like a horror movie, because Taeyong brings him in front of a heavy metal door that reminds him of a prison door with all the bars and everything, but still he doesn’t regret this.

“Taeyong! Why did you bring such a nice smelling human in here? Taeyong, we could smell him from a mile away. The dreamies are still chicklings, what happens when they lose control?” Nice smelling? That’s a new compliment. This guy is new. He looks like he can crush someone with his bare hands. Okay, Doyoung is fine with that. Why do all the supernatural people get all the good genes again?

“So you did bring me here to murder me. Nice to know.” Maybe Doyoung means it literally, maybe Doyoung is joking. Not even Doyoung knows. It’s certainly a very good setup for a murder scene, he knows that, with all of Taeyong’s friends surrounding him and a forest to hide his body in. Heck, if they need to incinerate all evidence that Doyoung every existed they could do that too. 

“Jaehyun’s just being too cautious. It’ll be fine. Besides, Yuta can fix any damage they do just fine, none of it is irreversible.” Taeyong dismisses, and Doyoung isn’t comforted by that. He isn’t keen about having to look at a third degree burn or something. Doctors are the most underated people in the entire world. They do some… interesting stuff and somehow save lives doing those interesting stuff.

“Besides death.”

Maybe they don’t have a necromancer in their coven, that’s a shame. Well, not really, because Doyoung is not too keen on meeting more undead with rotting flesh and bones falling apart, but it would be interesting. The one thing all human see as irreversible and scary being reversed, only to find that the reversed version can be more terrifying.

Reversed does not mean original.

“Shush, Jaehyun. Your opinion doesn’t matter.” ‘Jaehyun’ makes a wounded expression, but retreats back to another hallway, as they keep walking down a red carpet, of the foyer. It’s far too grand for Doyoung to believe it is tucked away in the middle of a city, a city with people nosy and curious.

Chenle is hovering between the chandelier and the ground. There’s fire beneath his feet and a maniac smile on his face. 

“Oh my god. What is Chenle doing up there, he’s going to fall and get hurt.”

Taeyong opens a hidden door. Inside the room, the only thing lighting everything are the sparse candles, but the room is grandiose, with it’s high ceilings and shiny gold trimmings. A map of the stars lights the room’s ceiling. The room is alive with the life of magic, and even Doyoung, someone non magical, knows this.

It gives the room a heartbeat, that his heart slows down to match, no longer beating from adrenaline.

“Don’t worry about it. Chenle’s a phoenix, boy can regenerate like the cockroaches you and Yuta are always screaming about.”

On the very far right side of the room, there is a wall, filled with portraits of scarily detailed colors. The portraits almost feel like they are alive themselves, humans, with their bodies trapped inside the walls and their faces sticking out.

“Hmmn. You should know some of them right?”

Doyoung nods. It’s terrifyingly beautiful, with the silver and gold patterns, black words in fancy script on the top reading ‘Salus populi suprema lex esto’. He isn’t too sure what it means, but it rings something in his soul.

“Nice. Okay so this is our coven portrait wall. It’s enchanted so all our honorary human coven members are removed once they die. There’s another wall for them on the other end of the room. If you join our coven you’ll be able to see it.”

The wall is painted with 20 faces and names and descriptions underneath them. Some of them he knows, like Yuta the Dragon, Chenle the Phoenix, Donghyuck the half Fae, Taeil the half Siren, Mark the adorable Vampire, and Jaemin the part Genie. He recognizes some of the portraits, like Jaehyun the Thunderbird (the one who told him he was likely to die), and Johnny the Griffin (the one who very often steals Taeil from his checkout counter to do god knows what). Others it feels like he is supposed to know, but Doyoung cannot for the life of him figure out where in the universes he is supposed to know them from. (Take Sicheng the Aurae for example, his name and face feel like they are someone that he is close to, brings a light of joy to think about, but he does not know why.) For now, he will not think about it.

At the very top, skewed just left of the center is Taeyong’s own portrait, and it looks unendingly good. It does not say Taeyong the Vampire however, the fancy script under the portrait says Taeyong the Nephelae, and that just brings up more questions.

Right next to Taeyong, there is a silken cloth glinting in the light, obviously there to cover someone. Instinct tells him that he does not want to know or see what is underneath the cloth. Curiosity tells him he should know who is beneath the cloth.

He does not want to ask.

“Youngie! You should join our coven! Sungie thinks you smell good.” In the end, his instinct wins, if only because Chenle jumps on him. Doyoung assumes Chenle’s Sungie is Jisung, the youngest of the coven according to the dates on the portrait wall. The hyperactive child clings to him, and only lets go when they both feel the burning of Taeyong’s stare. 

“I’ll think about it, Lele.”

Taeyong takes Chenle’s place on his back, but Taeyong is taller and his feet reach the ground, so Doyoung does not have to worry about being crushed. Not that Chenle is heavy, not at all. He does however hear Taeyong take a deep breath in.

“For what are you sniffing at my neck for?”

“You smell nice, Jaehyun and Jisung are right, you know. Like Jasmine and wild oranges. Jasmine is very nice, you know, very calming and can be used as a natural remedy for stress, anxiety, depression and fatigue. Wild Orange is also very good, is wonderfully good for uplifting mood and energy.”

There’s a pause, and it’s just the two of them standing in the candlelit room, the stars far above them. It’s quiet. It’s nice. It’s also very nostalgic for no reason at all.

“They also can both be used as aphrodiasiacs. And I really want to bite you.”

“Oh my god, Taeyong.”

* * *

“Taeyong, why do you always hunt for the reincarnations of Dongyoung? Aren’t you tired of this? Just turn him! It won’t do any harm at all.”

“Jaehyun. I promised him an eternity once when we were still in the light of grace… I took that eternity away, and I have to get it back.”

“Taeyong, how much longer will you endure this? Is it really worth it for both of you to continue suffering like this?”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. I'm not sure if this lives up to your expectations, but yeah. Feel free to complain once more in the comments, honestly even complaints make my day. Yes, this is part of the Target series, believe me when I say there is an entire universe for this and this is only a very, very small portion of all the lives Doyoung has lived through. :3 No hints for anything though! If you have read this far, thank you for reading this and have a nice day! uwu ~Lia out!


End file.
